My take on the 25 best Twitter Accounts for Social Media Marketing

http://hub.uberflip.com/h/i/2233164-25-twitter-accounts-to-follow-for-social-media-marketing

This great article is littered with people and companies to follow to keep you engaged in what is going on in the Social Media Marketing world. Companies we have engaged in with class like Mashable, Hootsuite, and Econsultancy. It even includes people, like Gary Vaynerchuk, author of the very interesting Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook! I look forward to using this list in the future to capitalize on the things I learned in class and hopefully keep them with me throughout my career in the always evolving world of Social Media.

Playoff Season Has Started in D.C.

The NHL and NBA playoffs have begun. That’s good news this year for the two teams that occupy the Verizon Center in our Nations Capitol. The Wizards and Capitals are both in the playoffs at the same time since the early 2000’s. Good news for the city and their owner, Ted Leonsis.

The playoff season got off to a slow start thanks to the Capitals last night and the Mr. Hyde version of their extremely talented team. I say mr. Hyde because of how passive and boring to watch they are. Usually when you make this comparison the Jekyll is the bad side, but the capitals need a little more Jekyll in their game to play to their maximum potential. They need to play mean, Ovi plays mean every night, and he brought it last night you know he’s going to in the playoffs. But the rest of the team was soft, and that’s too bad, because we just gave home ice back to the Islanders. Need to win Friday and take care of the rest from there. Not time to panic, but someone needs to get mean.

The wizards will begin their postseason push early Saturday on ESPN. Im not expecting much from this group, I’m cautiously optimistic they can escape the first round, but it’ll be hard to overcome a bone head coach to get much farther than that. Wittman holds this team back, and John Wall’s stardom, dominance, and leadership overcomes most of that, but Bradley Beal needs to be let loose, let the man eat, because he’s 21 years old and hungry. I realize he may not be 100% but PP takes too many shots from him and he doesn’t play enough alongside Wall. Figure it our Wittman, cause this team is going to be good soon.

My Experience With a Beta Version of Google Glasses

Back in 2010 when i was a high school junior I had just gotten the hottest new android for christmas. As i was exploring all the ins and outs of my very first smartphone i stumbled across the app store and begin downloading all the free and interesting apps that I could find. One of those was an extremely early edition of google glass, maybe even the first.

Here’s how it worked, once you selected the app it would automatically open to your camera and ask you to take a picture of whatever it is you wanted to know more about. Say you pointed it at an xbox, the google glasses software would recognize that product give a quick summary, list places you could buy them and how much they would cost. Know i picked an xbox because that is a fairly recognizable item, from my experience the glasses had trouble identifying objects that were not very popular, something I found interesting. However if whatever item you were trying to find out about more in depth had a barcode the google glass technology doubled as a bar code scanner and would retrieve select information through that.

While i did not find the app very useful it was cool to play with, show off to friends, and use it as a talking piece, but it did not have any value to me personally. I think it is cool to look back at large apps when they were startups or even large companies when they were just getting off the ground and seeing exactly what kind of thing they were trying to accomplish at the beginning and what they are focusing on now.

Opening Day Countdown: 4 Days

The Major League Baseball season begins Sunday night, and once Monday comes around there will be baseball just about every day for the next seven months. Some could care less, some not at all, but for me opening day is one of the best days of the calendar year. Spring is finally arriving, pools are opening and summer is just around the corner.

But baseball is going through a change in command this season, welcoming in a new commissioner for the first time in over twenty years. Rob Manfred replaced Bud Selig at the end of last season and he has some ideas that will hopefully speed up the game so they do not last over 3 hours, and make it more fun of an atmosphere in the ballpark. They’re challenging issues that present themselves for the future of baseball, but what if it isn’t really broke? Yes, the demographic is much different then any other professional sports and the engagement they get from 18-30 year olds is not ideal. But owners are obviously still making money if they are offering 220 million dollar contracts almost every offseason for the past four years. That number is going to skyrocket in the coming years by the way, because players like Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, Kris Bryant, and many other young superstars are going to get off their rookie contracts and want to get paid and they know they can get paid in baseball. So, again maybe baseball thinks they have a problem with their demographic, but if 34 years old, second tier catchers can sign contracts up to 80 million dollars then baseball is doing just fine. Ask the owners about their television deals.

Let The Madness Begin

This may be one of the funnest weekend of the year for your normal college sports fan. March Madness opening weekend is the single best time for anyone who loves exciting games, buzzer beaters, and dreams being made or destroyed. However, games are not just being played on the hardwood.

Next to the Super Bowl, March Madness is one of the busiest time of year for companies who want to advertise and make a name for themselves on a big stage, like many teams are trying to do. You’ll see your favorite companies with witty tweets and interactions during the tournament, but just like the tournament itself several unknowns will come out of the woodwork and show that they can market and advertise on the same stage as the fortune 500 companies.

For a social media nerd and college basketball fan like myself I look forward to this event for the obvious reason of watching the games, but I also love seeing the interactions on social media, the deals that tie themselves in with the tournament and the overall fun that occurs during this time of year.

Ronda Rousey Has Something To Say

Ronda Rousey wants to be heard, she wants to give women a voice, and she knows how to do it. She broke onto the scene in the summer of 2008, taking the bronze medal at the Olympic games for jujitsu. She became the first women to sign with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in 2012; she has not lost a fight since and is becoming a very influential person for the UFC, and women who want to follow in similar footsteps as Ronda. Ronda isn’t clean cut, polite, or politically correct, and that isn’t a bad thing. She enters fights with an intensity that is almost impossible to match, she wants to destroy you and then tell you about it afterwards, she is a fighter, competitor, and most importantly she is giving a voice to every single women that doesn’t want to follow the social norms that society puts amongst them.

While she is first and foremost dedicated to the UFC, her training, and becoming the most dominate women’s fighter of her time she also has her eyes on other things and knows that her fighting career wont last forever, so she has already started laying the foundation for what she wants to do after that part of her life is over. Not too long ago she abruptly left a lunch meeting with her agent and trainer. She needed to make it to here acting lessons that she signed up for twice a week. She is due to star in the new Entourage movie and has signed on to a couple other pictures that will be shooting soon and released around 2016. She also stars in the newest Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, which is something new for female fighters, gladiators essentially. Maybe it isn’t common for women fighters to be displayed in such a manner, maybe they feel like they don’t belong in that “supermodel” category, but Ronda Rousey doesn’t care, she’s breaking down barriers and giving voice to a very important set of people. While people know bits and pieces about her personal life, but when her book My Fight/Your Fight comes out in the following months it will give people and even bigger and more understanding look inside the life of a women’s mixed martial arts fighter/bathing suit model/actor/author, quite an accomplishment for a 28 year old.

Maybe Rousey wont be the definitive voice for a certain women’s generation, maybe she’ll disappear for a while, or maybe she’ll get caught up in legal trouble like so many influential athletes have recently and people will begin to question their trust in her. But, maybe she keeps giving women a voice, and when people see her they see someone that did it her way, wasn’t a perfect role model in todays society, but she’s a perfect role model going forward for women who want to make a splash, be heard, and carry such an innate, beautiful toughness with them. She wants to be more than a one-dimensional fighter, and she is on her way to doing just that.

Spring Training Has Begun

We are only a week away from the first spring training games of the 2015 MLB season. Story lines are surrounding all of the ball clubs in both Florida and Arizona. Josh Hamilton personal struggles continue, and he can’t shake the past that almost took his life years ago. New names with new teams, question marks surround the defending champion Giants and if they properly reloaded. Mike Trout looks to continue his dominance and protect his MVP crown.

But my focus has been on Viera, Florida and the Washington Nationals camp. New faces like, Max Scherzer, Yunel Escobar, Dan Uggla, and Mike Carp have arrived. Max will be a top of the line starter, Yunel should get most the starts at second, and you could see him shift to short to give Desmond a rare day off every once in a while. But the real news is Bryce Harper and his confidence strutting themselves all over the grounds.

Personally, I don’t mid this, it isn’t like the whole World Series thing is a secret anymore. They signed the top FA pitcher to a huge contract and added him to one of the most feared rotations in baseball. And Bryce needs to take that next step as a professional, maybe thats tough to say since he has played his short, but accomplished career with his hair on fire, and i don’t doubt that he continues to do that, but there has to be a point where not just Harper, but the whole team isn’t just happy to be there anymore, but ready to take it to the next level.

Playoff Pushes Being Made In The District

Just because it is mid-February doesn’t mean there aren’t important games taking place on a nightly basis. The Wizards and Capitals are both in the midst of one of the most important stretches of their respective seasons. Both are in the top five of their conferences and it is very likely that the Verizon Center will be pulling double duty this spring by managing Wizard and Capitals playoff contests.

The Wizards are heading into the Valentine’s Weekend/All-star break at a mesmerizing stumble. The team is broke, they need to add an extra guard capable of handling the ball not named Andre Miller and they need to hope and pray that Bradley Beal is not  seriously injured. Losers of six in their last eight, the All-Star break could not come at a better time for the players and the front office. Players need to rest, and everyone except John Wall needs to think long and hard to themselves about what they’re going to do in order to help John Wall, and the front office needs to figure out who they’re going to bring in to help John Wall. So basically this whole team revolves around JW2 and thats what should be going on with a lottery pick about to enter his prime having a MVP caliber season. The Wiz have too much fire power to keep struggling like this, look for them to bounce back the last 30 games of the regular season and end up a top three seed in the Eastern Conference Playoffs.

The Capitals have been playing fairly consistent hockey throughout the year and are in a pretty comfortable spot as far as playoff position goes. Their three game West Coast swing got off to a good start last night as they took down the Sharks with an OT goal from the great JW42. But their back to back with the Kings and Ducks looms large, important to get at least a couple points from those two games. While the Caps are currently in one of the lower playoff spots, their fate is well within their own control. A large number of Metropolitan Division games remain including two with the Penguins, three with the Rangers, and one with the Islanders, all four teams are looking to take over the top spot in the Metropolitan. This team continues to get better, Trotz has given them the coaching leadership that hasn’t been there the past two seasons and the breakneck rate that Ovi goes about scoring goals, along with his occasional defense are positive things for this explosive team. We’ll see what happens at the trade deadline, but improving on a questionable defense would not hurt.

The Lulls of the Winter Sports Scene

To many, the Super Bowl is the climax of the sport entertainment world. Two weeks of nothing but football coverage, media interviews, controversial stories, and then finally the game. Over 14 days of talking and then two halves of American football that take roughly 75 minutes to complete, and then throw an uber entertaining halftime show in the mix and you’ve got four hours of really solid television. But then what? Then, it’s done. No more football until August, baseball doesn’t get going for the average fan until April, and both hockey and basketball are going through the motions of their nine month long season.

This will go one for a solid month, a month of nothing exciting expect your occasional top 5 matchup in college basketball, maybe an interesting UFC or Boxing match, but it is a struggle to a fan of the sport entertainment industry. It’s a drought that happens every year, except of course the Winter Olympics are going on, which, in that case we have a two week gap that can potentially save us while everyone waits for, in my opinion the most exciting sporting event in the world, March Madness.

In my opinion the two greatest sport television program happen only a month apart from each other, The Super Bowl to March Madness, and the latter even lasts a whole month! But as people were always wanting more, so maybe this month off just seems longer because it is sandwiched in between to two most exciting events of the year, or maybe a month is kind of a long time. Either way, I don’t like it.